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Event Detail

Thursday, October 4, 2012

A Cost of High Trust: Opportunistic (and Disproportionate) Deceit to Female Negotiators

Laura Kray, WAPPP Fellow; Professor, Haas School of
Business, University of California, Berkeley

In this session, we will examine the relationship between gender
and the likelihood of being deceived in face-to-face negotiations.
Prior research has demonstrated that due to gendered socialization
patterns, females are expected to be higher in interpersonal trust
(IT) than males in the face of deceit. Therefore in our own
research, we expected more deception targeted at female than males.
Using confederates who followed a scripted pattern of deceit, Study
1 (N = 75) showed that females were higher in IT than males, both
before and after being deceived. Whereas greater questioning of
lies predicted lower IT for males, females’ IT was unaffected by
their questioning of lies. Study 2 involved a negotiation
simulation in the MBA classroom (N = 298). As hypothesized, females
were deceived more frequently than males, yet females perceived no
less honesty in their counterparts than did males. Furthermore,
deception predicted higher agreement rates and more negative
subjective experiences for negotiation dyads involving females. In
our session, we will discuss these results and examine how the
topic of deception of females in negotiations might be approached
or circumvented.